Is comparative method the way to study politics?

Updated on March 3, 2010

There
are different methods of studying politics other than comparative:
experimental, statistical and case study. All of them have their own
advantages and disadvantages but here we shall concentrate on
exploring comparative method.

Arend
Lijphart argues that “the term “comparative politics” indicates
the “how” but does not specify the “what” of the analysis”.
Comparativists usually compare and contrast different component parts
of countries’ political systems and try to find differences and
certain tendencies. Comparison consists of the following basic
operations: compiling a list of things to compare, sorting and
classifying them and, eventually, carrying out a basic act of
comparison and making relevant conclusions. Comparative method can be
used to compare political systems of different countries and also it
can be used to compare political systems over time. There are
different “schools” of the subject in the study of comparative
politics as well – institutionalism and functionalism.
Institutionalism refers to the practice of comparing political
institutions such as governments, political parties etc.

Functionalism is opposed to institutionalism in the way that however
different political systems are, they all have the same functions. In
functionalism, these are functions that matter, not institutions.

The
main advantage of comparative method is that it makes the study of
politics more structured and conclusions derived with this method are
more precise. For example, we shall compare electoral systems in the
UK and Germany. In Britain the electoral system is referred as single
member plurality system. This is when the candidate with the largest
number of votes in each constituency wins the seat in parliament.
This system allows some parties to secure the majority of seats
because even a small surge of support will significantly increase the
number of seats for winning party comparing to the parties coming
after. One of the strongest advantages of single member plurality
system is that it produces clear-cut electoral decisions with
single-party governments able to exercise leadership. But the
disadvantage of this system is when the party achieves the second
place in the majority of seats, it will suffer from
under-representation in the parliament, which means that many votes
are just wasted. This leads for more citizens to act in informal and
unorthodox forms of political participation.

For
comparison, Germany adopted the additional member system, which can
be described as a hybrid of single member plurality system and
proportional representation. Voters vote within this electoral
system: for their party and also for their local representative. So
half of the seats in the Bundestag are allocated in the same way as
in Britain and the other half of the seats are allocated according to
the proportion of votes received by each party in each region. This
allows fairly proportional allocating seats in the parliament and
also allows smaller parties to have representatives even if they are
not successful in any individual constituency. But it should be
mentioned that still the result is not strictly proportional as there
is a threshold of support which is five percent. This is done to deny
access to parliament for minor radical parties.

Of
course, there are certain difficulties and disadvantages in
comparative method as well. Common problem of social sciences is that
there are usually too many variables and too few cases. There are
more than 200 countries in the world, but unfortunately for us, they
are all quite different. It is impossible to compare radically
different or completely identical countries, so in order to take the
advantage of comparative method, only similar countries with minor
differences should be compared and in some cases it may prove to be
complicated to find such.

The
other problem with the comparative method is that research might be
not objective and the researcher deliberately chooses countries to
show negative or positive moments to proof his/her point of view. For
example, let’s consider a hypothesis, that countries with weak
trade unions are more economically successful than countries with
strong trade unions. Here, trade unionists and, on opposite side,
managing directors have a political point to make, so more than
likely their conclusions might completely differ. So we should be
aware that conclusions are not driven by someone’s motivations and
values.

Comparative
method is definitely the best choice to study and analyze
contemporary politics, but we should be aware of the difficulties
associated with this method. Comparative method simplifies a complex
political reality and makes it more manageable. Comparative politics
brings us into contact with political worlds other than our own and
expands our political and cultural horizons. Comparative approach to
studying of politics also enables us to move beyond mere description,
toward explanation and within this method we can talk about
comparative politics as a science. But on the other side, we
shouldn’t forget that any research of comparative method is
vulnerable to personal interests and motivations. Therefore we need
to make sure that such research should only consist of facts,
conclusions derived from these facts and be free of any assumptions.

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